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Sticks and stones may break our bones, but some words make us materialistic!
One of the most consistent findings in the study of human behavior over the last 10 or so years is that the more people in economically developed countries place high value on pursuing material wealth...
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I’ll just have what you’re having: On feeling left out and buying our way...
Imagine yourself in this situation. You’ve been asked to participate in a series of marketing studies. That’s fine, because you are getting course credit for it. The experimenter tells you that you are...
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The Anchoring Effect: The Old Numerical Ball and Chain
We like to think we are rational decision-makers, but if you have read any of our blog entries (here, or here, or here, for instance) or, indeed, any of dozens of popular books about how we decide...
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Persuasion
Last week’s blog entry described a series of studies conducted by Professor Robert Cialdini and colleagues, which demonstrated one of the means by which we are persuaded. Professor Cialdini’s work also...
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It’s a boy! On The Developmental Biology of Your… Car?
One of Volkswagen’s promotional billboards for the latest version of their popular Beetle proclaimed, “It’s a boy!” in reference to the new styling the car sported for 2012. That would seem to suggest...
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Why A Bird in My Hand is Worth Two Anywhere Else
We have already briefly discussed the endowment effect, but research has shed light on the nature of this economic bias, and so we thought it would be worth a deeper look. At BtP, we are interested in...
View ArticleCommas and Cents: Why $1,999.00 is More Than $1999
Try this at home… read the following numbers aloud: 1900 1,900 Notice anything funny? If you are like most people, you read the comma-less 1900 as “nineteen-hundred” and the comma’d 1,900 as “one...
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She’s not looking at you: What really inspires a woman to go shopping
Recently, I have discussed research demonstrating that when men engage in conspicuous consumption, such as buying an expensive sports car, they are often doing so in order to signal to potential mates...
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The self-enhancement bias: Or, how I ended up with the Slap Chop
Recently, a friend of mine was asked how tall he was. He quickly replied, Do you mean in person or online? He was joking of course, but the joke is funny because we all know that people tend to, well…...
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If everyone is winning, how come we all lose so much? The perils of hot stock...
I have a friend — we’ll call her Ai — who has made some disastrous investment decisions. You see, Ai worked for a long time in the high tech sector, where Ai was exposed to a large number of tech...
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